.John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life"".......... "Matthew 16: 24. Then Jesus said to his disciples:" If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me "

Sonntag, 7. Oktober 2012

The origin of marriage

The origin of marriage

source:theweekmagazine.com

The institution of marriage is now the subject of a bitter national debate. How did marriage begin—and why?How old is the institution?The
best available evidence suggests that it’s about 4,350 years old. For
thousands of years before that, most anthropologists believe, families
consisted of loosely organized groups of as many as 30 people, with
several male leaders, multiple women shared by them, and children. As
hunter-gatherers settled down into agrarian civilizations, society had a
need for more stable arrangements. The first recorded evidence of
marriage ceremonies uniting one woman and one man dates from about 2350
B.C., in Mesopotamia. Over the next several hundred years, marriage
evolved into a widespread institution embraced by the ancient Hebrews,
Greeks, and Romans. But back then, marriage had little to do with love
or with religion.What was it about, then?Marriage’s
primary purpose was to bind women to men, and thus guarantee that a
man’s children were truly his biological heirs. Through marriage, a
woman became a man’s property. In the betrothal ceremony of ancient
Greece, a father would hand over his daughter with these words: “I
pledge my daughter for the purpose of producing legitimate offspring.”
Among the ancient Hebrews, men were free to take several wives; married
Greeks and Romans were free to satisfy their sexual urges with
concubines, prostitutes, and even teenage male lovers, while their wives
were required to stay home and tend to the household. If wives failed
to produce offspring, their husbands could give them back and marry
someone else.When did religion become involved?As the
Roman Catholic Church became a powerful institution in Europe, the
blessings of a priest became a necessary step for a marriage to be
legally recognized. By the eighth century, marriage was widely accepted
in the Catholic church as a sacrament, or a ceremony to bestow God’s
grace. At the Council of Trent in 1563, the sacramental nature of
marriage was written into canon law.Did this change the nature of marriage?Church
blessings did improve the lot of wives. Men were taught to show greater
respect for their wives, and forbidden from divorcing them. Christian
doctrine declared that “the twain shall be one flesh,” giving husband
and wife exclusive access to each other’s body. This put new pressure on
men to remain sexually faithful. But the church still held that men
were the head of families, with their wives deferring to their wishes.When did love enter the picture?Later
than you might think. For much of human history, couples were brought
together for practical reasons, not because they fell in love. In time,
of course, many marriage partners came to feel deep mutual love and
devotion. But the idea of romantic love, as a motivating force for
marriage, only goes as far back as the Middle Ages. Naturally, many
scholars believe the concept was “invented” by the French. Its model was
the knight who felt intense love for someone else’s wife, as in the
case of Sir Lancelot and King Arthur’s wife, Queen Guinevere.
Twelfth-century advice literature told men to woo the object of their
desire by praising her eyes, hair, and lips. In the 13th century,
Richard de Fournival, physician to the king of France, wrote “Advice on
Love,” in which he suggested that a woman cast her love flirtatious
glances—“anything but a frank and open entreaty.”Did love change marriage?It
sure did. Marilyn Yalom, a Stanford historian and author of A History
of the Wife, credits the concept of romantic love with giving women
greater leverage in what had been a largely pragmatic transaction. Wives
no longer existed solely to serve men. The romantic prince, in fact,
sought to serve the woman he loved. Still, the notion that the husband
“owned” the wife continued to hold sway for centuries. When colonists
first came to America—at a time when polygamy was still accepted in most
parts of the world—the husband’s dominance was officially recognized
under a legal doctrine called “coverture,” under which the new bride’s
identity was absorbed into his. The bride gave up her name to symbolize
the surrendering of her identity, and the husband suddenly became more
important, as the official public representative of two people, not one.
The rules were so strict that any American woman who married a
foreigner immediately lost her citizenship.How did this tradition change?Women
won the right to vote. When that happened, in 1920, the institution of
marriage began a dramatic transformation. Suddenly, each union consisted
of two full citizens, although tradition dictated that the husband
still ruled the home. By the late 1960s, state laws forbidding
interracial marriage had been thrown out, and the last states had
dropped laws against the use of birth control. By the 1970s, the law
finally recognized the concept of marital rape, which up to that point
was inconceivable, as the husband “owned” his wife’s sexuality. “The
idea that marriage is a private relationship for the fulfillment of two
individuals is really very new,” said historian Stephanie Coontz, author
of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.
“Within the past 40 years, marriage has changed more than in the last
5,000.”Men who married menGay marriage is rare in
history—but not unknown. The Roman emperor Nero, who ruled from A.D. 54
to 68, twice married men in formal wedding ceremonies, and forced the
Imperial Court to treat them as his wives. In second- and third-century
Rome, homosexual weddings became common enough that it worried the
social commentator Juvenal, says Marilyn Yalom in A History of the Wife.
“Look—a man of family and fortune—being wed to a man!” Juvenal wrote.
“Such things, before we’re very much older, will be done in public.” He
mocked such unions, saying that male “brides” would never be able to
“hold their husbands by having a baby.” The Romans outlawed formal
homosexual unions in the year 342. But Yale history professor John
Boswell says he’s found scattered evidence of homosexual unions after
that time, including some that were recognized by Catholic and Greek
Orthodox churches. In one 13th-century Greek Orthodox ceremony, the
“Order for Solemnisation of Same Sex Union,” the celebrant asked God to
grant the participants “grace to love one another and to abide unhated
and not a cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of
the Holy Mother of God and all thy saints.”